English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Resuming the workshop and the species of the false 0:00 Good evening everyone. This really is a reunion, I tell you that every time, but still, here we are, third era. First era, the regular workshops at the Goscinny center, plus a few lives from time to time between two workshops. Then, the lockdown with the "attelages de la confinitude" [harnesses of confined-ness], which I thank you for following.
0:34 And finally, we're coming back a little to the material of the workshop that had started in the fall of 2019, and which, as you know, dealt with the logic of the subject, as far as the main title goes. So, these are reminders. But it's always good to take into account what's coming, the old veterans, the 23-year veterans, if I may say so, the faithful ones and the newcomers.
1:11 So, I'm really very happy to see you again, all the more so because — and that's why I allowed myself to thank you — in a text for which I thank Philippe, by the way, because he's the one who wrote it, to thank you for the rather favorable welcome you gave to our "attelages de la confinitude," because I won't hide from you that, especially regarding the last one, as they say you should never do self-evaluation, we're very bad at it, we can't be on the balcony and watch ourselves pass by in the street at the same time.
1:42 I had really thought that I'd somewhat botched things last time, because there was too much material, that it was complicated, that I'd asked for an effort of abstraction, and at the same time to draw connections between the Gospel of John, the theory of ideology in Marx, of money in Hegel. It seemed to me I was asking a lot of you. Now I look at the reactions, and one of you even tells me, that might be the best thing you've done.
2:14 That doesn't mean it's good, it's the best thing I've done. Maybe the least bad, I don't know. But in any case, the reception was very positive, and that's why we didn't take long to consult, in association, in particular with Philippe, to carry on with our lives, since I called again recently, our Goscinny center remains closed, and still has the same announcement as in March, namely that it's closed until further notice.
2:46 I left a short email asking them to let us know, to be kind enough to tell us when they have an idea of the reopening date, but in the meantime, we have time to carry on among ourselves, to keep going with the format, the formula, whatever you want to call it. And for this time, precisely because of the density — I won't say richness, that would be a value judgment — but the density of the content stirred up last time, and its relative complexity, that's the least one can say sometimes, I decided to stay on the same theme, it's well worth two sessions, and so I won't give you an outline properly speaking, but I'll tell you in advance that I'm going to alternate at times illustrations of the progress we made last time, in particular the different meanings of "false" — the false as simply different from the true, the false as the opposite of the true, illusion, the false as lying, the false as lying to others, the false as lying to oneself, you see, we're going to come back to all these kinds
3:57 of falseness, everything opposed to the true, which I'll bring to life through very concrete examples and readings, and texts that will let us see a bit, here and now, what's going on. And then, in a second stage, I'll make the one advance, because I wanted to give the brains a bit of a rest, and so not proceed like a forced march of important new advances, but I'll make one anyway.
4:39 I'm telling you now, I'm telling you — sorry — right from this introduction, I'm going to raise the question of whether there isn't a possible synthesis that would let us get out of the relative vagueness where we stopped, and I did that on purpose, it wasn't for lack of time, last time, because of the complexity of our subject matter. That's when I spoke, let's say, of everything analogous to the notion of the unconscious, of ideology in Marx.
5:18 Marx does say that in the social production of their existence, men enter into necessary, determined relations, independent of their will. So that's entirely outside consciousness. Let me remind you that when I go out and step onto the sidewalk, I don't think in my head about coming into contact with the probably immigrant worker who produced this sidewalk, which allows me, like you, not to walk in the mud. I haven't thought about it, yet objectively I do enter into that relation — you see, this isn't at all the Freudian unconscious, you see, I'm taking this example on purpose.
5:51 But the common point, still, is that this completely escapes consciousness, which is only a small part of the subject that our discussion deals with — you see that all this is less scattered than it seems. So the subject is a bit like the whole iceberg, consciousness is the small part we see that emerges, isn't it? You know there's nothing more treacherous than an iceberg whose submerged part you don't see, or a reef covered by the swell, isn't there? There you go. And which rips open the hull of ships.
6:24 So, we'll see — I left things vague by saying, is it really a lie? Is Nerval a liar when suddenly the scene blurs in that dream where he's so close to grasping his truth, well, at least the truth of his dream, his dream that takes place on the banks of the Rhine, in the direction of the maternal tomb, etc. In short, we saw all that, I won't repeat myself, but it's at the moment when it's almost clearest, when there's this feminine figure whose eyes are drawn to a touch of forget-me-nots.
6:58 We saw that "myosotis," literally, for a German speaker like Nerval — and moreover the dream takes place on the banks of the Rhine — is said "Vergissmeinnicht," "forget me not" in English. And yes, we say in French "j'ai cueilli des forget me not," that's how it is, it's pretty, like the myosotis. Which makes me think, by the way — I hadn't thought of it last time, so I'll take the opportunity — the thistle, another plant, is called in German "Männertreu"
7:28 — man. With the genitive "-er," "Männer," of what, of man. Faithfulness, "Treu," which gives us "true" in English. "Treu," "Männertreu." I'm telling you this, because if you look at a magnificent self-portrait by Dürer, who is one of the greatest narcissists in the history of painting, since he left a series of admirable self-portraits, one of which he made to send to his fiancée for their marriage proposal, and he's holding a thistle in his hand.
8:00 So, we understand, it means man's faithfulness, you see. There you go. So, let's be clear, this dream, where he's so close to his truth, where this painting representing the famous fairy of that shore, etc. — it's at the moment when he's closest to the truth that everything blurs. We didn't conclude from that that he was a filthy liar, that he was in ideological duplicity, to use a term from Marx, or in the very essence of evil, to the point of personifying the evil one, the devil, in the Gospel, as you recall, of whom it is said that the essence of the devil is lying.
The lie, essence of evil according to the Gospel of John 8:47 I'll take the opportunity here to answer one of you who told me there's a kind of contradiction. Why would that mean — why would evil be lying? Wouldn't it rather be impurity that is evil? Well, I want to remind him that I'm not doing interpretation. Because he tells me it's impurity, the essence of evil, no, he tells me, with a question mark.
9:17 I don't know, I'm not doing interpretation. I quoted passages from the evangelist's text. These are texts too well known, too important for me to allow myself to say, in my opinion, and that means such and such. Agreed? So there you go, I refer him back to verse 44, if I remember correctly, where it's said very clearly that the prince of this world, his essence is lying, there is no part of truth in him, he is a liar and the father of lies. There you go, I can't speak, interpret, in his place.
9:49 There's no need to interpret when it's this clear. The relationship between lying and the essence of evil. So, as we had seen that there is a whole zone — that's where we left off — that is neither a deliberate lie... since the first text I'm going to quote will be a deliberate lie, I'll tell you right away, it's the way English factory owners, I found this in Capital, got around the law, the laws on working hours, the length of the working day, at a time when, as Marx says, capital was indulging in veritable orgies, wasn't it, orgies of consumption of human labor power.
10:32 No, between deliberate lying and truth, there's a whole intermediate zone of which I'll give you two illustrious examples, on purpose — one found in Kant's text that we saw last time, so, don't move, I'll find it for you here.
11:07 Yes, I'm all the more happy to see you again since we had that untimely interruption, which must be entirely my fault, I don't know what I did, but I hope I won't do it again.
Reading of Hegel's letter to Schelling 11:43 And so, I was reading you an excerpt from Hegel's letter to his young friend Schelling, wasn't I, in — I'll find it, there — I'll take it up a bit higher, where they're getting enthusiastic about the revolution of ideas underway, isn't that so, for all these young post-Kantians, who are extending what is best in the French Revolution, in the legacy of Rousseau, there, as far as the practical order goes, and of course as far as the knowledge of nature goes, of Newton in the order of the knowledge of objects, let's say, to go quickly.
12:40 So, the consequences that will follow, then, from all these upheavals, will plunge many people into astonishment. One will feel dizzy before this supreme height of all philosophy by which man was raised so high. You see here, and this smacks of Rousseau, doesn't it? Even though Pascal had said a century before, man surpasses infinitely — "passe" meant "surpasses" at the time.
13:10 in classical language. It's not only empirical man. Or as Rousseau says, from the rank of king, which a coward, a wicked man, a madman can fill just as well as anyone else, he rises to the state of man, which so few men know how to fulfill. One will feel dizzy before this supreme height of all philosophy by which man was raised so high. You understand why I insist and linger, because I have rarely seen man so debased as in the dominant ideology of the times we're living through.
13:43 Isn't that so? It seems that this is even the only plague there is in the universe. Well, I believe no sign of the times is better than this one: that humanity is represented as so worthy of esteem in itself, it's proof that the halo surrounding the heads of oppressors and the gods of the earth is disappearing. The prestige, the halo, bling bling. Philosophers demonstrate this dignity, peoples will learn to feel it, and they will not be content to demand their rights, abased in the dust, but they will reclaim them, they will appropriate them for themselves.
14:25 I'm reading you a Hegel that's rarely read to you, so it's worth taking the time. And there, there's this sentence, look closely — we're far from the holy-water-font frog, in this author of whom it's said that he's barely secularized Christianity. Religion and politics have gotten along like thieves at a fair. This letter is on page 27 in the first volume, published by Gallimard, of Hegel's correspondence.
14:55 Religion and politics have gotten along like thieves at a fair. The first, religion, has taught what despotism wanted. We're not far from ideology. We think we're doing metaphysics and talking about the three substances in one, or whatever, and in fact we're perpetuating absolutism. Contempt for the human race, there, that's what the first has taught, what despotism wanted: contempt for the human race, colon, I'm telling you now because it's the case with the bourgeoisie, its incapacity to achieve any good whatsoever, to be by itself anything at all.
15:32 There are even some who say that the pandemic is also due to your excesses. Thanks to the spread of ideas showing how something ought to be — the "ought" is underlined — the indolence of people who are satisfied, willing to eternally accept things as they are, will disappear. This life-giving force, even if it must always carry within it some limitation, is nothing other than the force of ideas, like that of the fatherland, of its constitution, etc., will elevate minds and they will learn to devote themselves to these ideas.
16:06 For at present, the spirit of constitutions has made a pact with egoism, has founded its empire upon it. I don't want to spoil the beautiful ending for you — I always address to myself this call from the author of the Lives. Strain with all your strength toward the sun, friends, so that the salvation of humanity may soon reach maturity. It's clear he's spinning the metaphor of the Enlightenment here. What do the leaves that block us want? What do the branches want — make your way toward the sun, and if you feel tired from it, that too is good.
The immanent punishment of crime: Abel and Oedipus 16:39 You'll only sleep better for it. There you go. So, when I quote the Gospel here, it's to do semantics and not theology. Now, I tell you, in the symbolic order of religions as different as the Hebrew religion — the blood of your brother Abel cries out to me — and a pagan religion like that of the Greece of the time when Sophocles was writing, when he wrote Antigone, isn't it, Oedipus, sorry, here, it's the same family, Antigone being Oedipus's daughter.
17:21 In both cases, there is a punishment immanent to the crime. That is to say, even if I'm not conscious that I am the criminal, something comes to block my path as if to punish me. It's a fine, fine illustration of the unconscious. Remember what I said last time, I had been struck that in all of African plastic art, in particular wood sculpture, the masks, there's a recurring theme, very frequent, and over very distant areas from one another, without anyone having agreed on it, where you see birds on the head, on the skull of the mask, on top of the skull.
18:07 I'll also draw a parallel with the wings on the helmet, both among the Gauls and with a god like Hermes — I don't know, with Hermes or Mercury, whichever you prefer — who is the messenger of the gods. And precisely, precisely, you see, without knowing Greek mythology, the old Africans I asked why there are always birds on the helmet, they told me it's because it's the bird that escapes from your head to go and deliver your thoughts to the other person.
18:37 It's a communication. I express myself without realizing it — a very beautiful image of the Freudian slip, of the unconscious. Superb. I had also illustrated this with the fact that before the Queen of Sheba meets and makes contact with King Solomon, she is preceded by her own bird, the messenger hoopoe that escapes from her retinue and goes ahead to meet Solomon. There you go. So, we're right in the middle of this zone, you see, where you can't say I'm a criminal, that I'm a filthy liar, and yet I'm not telling the truth, and yet the truth, if I knew it, would be terrible for me, so I also have some reasons to hide it.
Money, self-forgetting, and equal means of forgetting 19:25 So, I had told you this isn't an outline, but after the illustrations I'm making by returning to the advances we made last time — here with the example of Oedipus, of the plague ravaging Thebes, and of Abel's blood crying out in Kant's text up to God — I'll take the opportunity to say that we'll see whether there isn't a possible synthesis, whether there isn't a necessary lie that has nothing guilty about it, that isn't of the order of evil here — I part ways with the evangelist here, if you look closely, all right?
19:58 And a lie that I'll later relate to the concept of justice — social justice — which I haven't yet brought in. Remember the main advance from last time, Hegel's definition of money, that is, money is the general form of need — we deduced from that, I had asked you for an effort of reasoning, of abstraction, which I'll recall here, step by step, very quickly: if it's the general form of need, that means money expresses no determinate need, but the possibility of satisfying all needs, and the more of it I have, the more numerous the needs I can satisfy.
20:41 Up to this point, no one needs to be especially sharp to agree, except that we don't see the consequence for the problem of lying, which is that as a result, money allows me to ignore myself, to put off to later the knowledge of myself that would be indispensable to know what would really be best for me, right now, what is most necessary, not just what would give me pleasure, but what would do me good. That's where we see the difference, isn't it, between pleasure, which is the value of libertinism — I have nothing against it.
21:16 And happiness — so I'm against reducing happiness to pleasure — and happiness, unlike pleasure, doesn't want to be merely evanescent and entirely enclosed in the instant, but to have a certain thickness of duration. That's why all narratives of happy periods in literature are told in the imperfect tense, if you look closely.
21:46 The happy days, to borrow the title of a superb film, isn't it, about the time of the Popular Front. I'll take the opportunity, then, and one could add to that the era of the Liberation, of the creation of the social advances that are being called into question today, pay-as-you-go pensions, of course, and social security. We'll see whether it isn't necessary to go further, isn't it, to always be lucid, lucid, lucid — why I don't want to be deathly and think constantly about the fact that I am a finite, mortal being.
22:19 It's good to forget, provided that... And that's where I speak of justice. Watch out, here I make the one step forward of this session, but it will be crucial for what follows: provided that every citizen has the same material means of forgetting. Remember Clouscard, whom I had quoted, who often said, for the same suffering—
22:50 a proletarian will have a psychotic break, he'll kill his wife's lover, kill his wife, and kill himself. I'm talking about news items which, unfortunately, are found every day in the paper. It happens very often in working-class circles, not only there, but very often. Whereas the bourgeois says, he'll have a neurosis. Go treat your depression in the well-hidden villa, in the Corsican scrubland I gave you, my dear. There you go, it's not...
23:21 You see? So, when everyone has the same, justly distributed means of enduring the misfortune of human existence, it's no longer a misfortune. There's the good news of the day. I'm telling you this in advance so as not to bury the lede. It's important, still. Remember the poem by Hölderlin that we saw two sessions ago, direct, where he... in Bread and Wine, where after beginning with a superb nocturne set in Germany under the lindens with the June breeze, suddenly he transports himself to Greece in his reverie, and after, well, a great praise of Greece, one might think he misses the beautiful statues, the beauty, the aestheticism.
24:06 He says no, no one alone bore life. That's what he misses about Greece. It's that there, one isn't lying to oneself. It's that, somehow, we all share the same fate, but we have several shoulders to bear it with. As a result it seems much lighter. There's the advance I'm asking you to take into account today. So, to illustrate it, I'll first go back to the misfortune of the human condition, that's the most famous part of Pascal's Pensées, it's the misery of man without God.
Pascal: the king's diversion, hunting and gambling 24:42 You know there are two main parts, the misery of man without God, and then afterwards, the solution to that misery through faith. Well, and what interests me here is the observation made by man, made by Pascal, about the unhappiness that man's would be if he were a bit more lucid. You know that Pascal's Pensées are called that after the fact, because these manuscripts were found in lots of little loose sheets. But in fact it was supposed to be called Apology for the Christian Religion.
25:14 An apology is a defense and illustration. Against whom? Against the strong-minded, as they were called back then, who were often atheists, but this isn't about dialectical materialism—though it was corrosive and subversive and bold for the time, often atomists in philosophy. I'm thinking of Gassendi, Cyrano de Bergerac, people like that. And what were called the libertines. Don't think that libertinism only concerns morals. There's a libertinism of thought that is very vigorous and far more important than that of morals.
25:51 Not that I'm a puritan condemning libertinism of morals, but I condemn the fact that it's reserved for the Marquis de Sade, for Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro, for the aristocracy that illustrates the admirable masterpiece by Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons. I have nothing against it. I'm against the fact that it's reserved for those who have money. I say this for those who think sexual liberation dates from '68—that's nonsense.
26:25 It has always existed, but it was reserved for an elite. What's new is that the middle classes now have access to it. And even the working classes, when it's not too particular. So I come back to Pascal, because you have the analysis of divertissement, of distraction, which prepares a development of what I call this kind of lie which is the lie to oneself, of not wanting to think about my truth because my truth is too unpleasant.
27:02 So it's more a privation of truth than a deliberate, brazen lie. And I'll take this opportunity to recall something I maybe should have done last time, but I'll do it now since we were a bit rushed at the end of the session. So I'll do it now. A crucial distinction made by Aristotle. I've already told you that Aristotle is the champion of distinctions. So he's very useful for everyone. The distinction between privation and negation. Agreed? A blind man is deprived of sight, says Aristotle.
27:32 Deprived because it is in the essence of man to see, to have eyes, if you prefer, normally. But if by accident he has lost his sight, he is deprived of sight. Whereas this book has no eyes. There, there is a negation of sight in the book, not merely a privation. I'm talking about this falseness which isn't really a lie but a privation of truth. It is indeed a self-privation of truth that distraction represents.
28:03 So, a few passages that are famous and have the advantage of being clear. That's why I make use of Pascal here—he's quite precious. You see? The king is surrounded by people who think only of distracting the king and preventing him from thinking about himself.
28:34 The jesters, the tumblers, the troubadours, whatever. Racine, Molière—there are several courtiers. For unhappy is any king, king though he is, if he thinks about it. So he must not think about it. I'll come back to this passage but let me give a few more... Still about the king. A few conditions—let's suppose we gather together all the goods that can belong to us, so let's assume we've won the jackpot. Kingship is the finest position in the world.
29:06 And yet let us imagine—implying a kingship—accompanied by all the satisfactions that can touch him materially. If he is without distraction and is left to consider and reflect on what he is, this languishing felicity will not sustain him. He will fall necessarily into the prospects that threaten him, the revolts that can occur, and finally death and the diseases that are inevitable, so that if he is without what is called distraction, there he is unhappy, and more unhappy than the least of his subjects who play and amuse themselves.
29:49 I'm giving you several texts because we need to really drive home this idea of distraction. No, I'm not going to draw the essential point yet. Nothing pleases us but the struggle, not the victory. We like to watch the combats of animals but not the winner relentlessly finishing off the loser. We never seek—now here's one of the most profound sentences in the history of thought. We never seek things, but the search for things. We do not desire things, we desire desire itself. You see, this is very modern, what Pascal says. We do not seek things but the seeking of things.
30:24 And of course, he takes the well-known example of the hare, for the hunter. Because the hunter who sets out at 5 in the morning, who has laced up his gaiters, who checks whether his gun is properly loaded in the morning mist, who has all the... I'm talking about the hunter who has a passion for it, who is overjoyed to go off hunting—if he sees his neighbor coming up saying 'Look, I just took one out of the freezer, I've got a hare all ready, you don't need to go hunting, come play cards with me instead and we'll ask our wives to cook the hare.' A real hunter doesn't like that.
30:56 He doesn't like that at all. Do you agree? Pascal takes two examples. The hare, as I told you. He means that it's the hunt that interests the hunter, even more than the hare. But he has to lie to himself and still say, what a shame we can't find a hare in this forest. You see? He needs to be able to convince himself. He takes two examples: hunting and gambling. And for gambling, he offers an even finer analysis. He says, suppose someone has a passion for gambling.
31:27 A gambler, as the Anglo-Saxons say, right? You know that no fortune withstands gambling any more than health withstands certain drugs. So, a real gambling addict. If you tell him, 'you're playing for money'—well, that contradicts Pascal—he's playing for an object, not for the game itself. Well, in that case, we say to him, 'listen, it works out well, I'm extremely rich, I'll give you a monthly pension, but you stop gambling.'
31:58 A real gambler is not satisfied by that. So much for the thesis. Now let's do the reverse. You can play as much as you want, but with matchsticks. Agreed? So there, it's the stake that disappears. There's no longer anything at stake in the game. Right? It's a German pun. Spiel, game, Beispiel, example. There's no more stake—Einsatz. A real gambler will never play with matchsticks. That would annoy him too. So you see how this relates to the lie.
32:30 There's a strange kind of lie, a kind of lie that I've been trying to clarify with you since last time, where I have to convince myself that it really is an external object that interests me, whereas deep down I know quite well that this isn't true, somewhere, since once I have it, there's no interest left at all. If I'm given, once again, the money I was trying to win gambling, given to me as a monthly pension on condition I stop gambling.
True morality mocks morality; diversion and justice 33:00 If I'm a real gambling addict, that won't work. So up to this point, Pascal is very subtle, very sharp; he belongs to the tradition of what's called the French moralists—not at all those who moralize. Here he's quite close to Nietzsche; there are aspects of Nietzsche who's not the worst thinker, far from it. Nietzsche disdains what he calls moraline, what Hegel will pejoratively call subjective morality. Basically, it's the morality that changes nothing much for the one who suffers.
33:32 What difference does it make if someone steps on your foot for the 15th time on the bus and says each time 'sorry, I didn't mean it,' how does that cause you problems—you ask questions. What difference does it make to someone who's on the receiving end of American aviation bombs, napalm bombs, carpet bombing during the Vietnam War, atrocities like Agent Orange, etc., where there are still malformed births even today, more than a generation after the war ended.
34:07 What difference does it make to him whether it's a black person, a woman, a young person, an old person in the plane that bombed—and whether he did it with death in his soul or did it joyfully and sadistically? There's a very striking document on Facebook, I'll try to repost it soon, where you see guys blasting hard rock and bombing these 'lemon faces.' You know, that's what Asians, the yellow people, were called—lemon faces. What difference does it make to the victim, in terms of subjective morality, whether it's a villain or an apparently nice guy dropping the bombs?
34:40 Well, that's to remind you of what Hegel calls, not without reason, with some contempt, subjective morality, what Nietzsche calls moraline, and what Pascal—I'm getting to it—calls in that famous sentence found in the Pensées: true morality mocks morality. The full quotation is: true eloquence mocks eloquence, true morality mocks morality. So I come back to the most important passage, which I haven't told you yet.
35:10 It seems to me that here he takes a further step in the analysis of what I call the privation of truth, if we're not to call it outright a lie. After recalling the example of the hare, he says this: here is everything men have been able to invent to make themselves happy. Chasing a hare one wouldn't want if it were offered to them, gambling money one wouldn't want if one received it as a monthly pension, etc. I won't go back over that.
35:41 Here is everything men have invented to make themselves happy. And he says to those who would play the moralist as he does and stop there saying, 'vanity of man,' that's it—that's the classic move since Antiquity, there were those who suspected as much, who had observed all this. And here there's something new. And those who play the philosopher on this point and believe that the world—the world is humanity, not the planet, not the Earth. It's the world that's in danger today, not the planet. The planet will still be there once all men are dead.
36:13 Even a billion years later, it will still be there. Try killing a rock, and let me know how that goes. It has trouble suffering and dying. Things merely emerge there. Only living beings risk anything at all. And those who play the philosopher on this and believe that the world—not the planet—it is quite unreasonable to spend all day running after a hare that they would not have wanted to buy; they hardly know our nature. And there, Pascal justifies distraction.
36:46 So, building on the idea I proposed to you a moment ago, I'm telling you there might be something positive in a certain privation of truth, if it were joined with social justice. Listen, this hare would not protect us from the sight of death. That, indeed, it is vain to believe, and from miseries. But the hunt that distracts us from it does protect us from it. So that's always something gained against sadness, against despair. And since it's been tens of thousands of years that man, having become aware of death, has multiplied occasions for distraction, that's what the history of civilization is, the history of technical progress.
37:23 As long as we believe technical progress serves need, we haven't understood anything about technical progress. Needs were satisfied already at the Neanderthal stage, who was one of the best hunters ever seen in the history of humanity. Prodigious hunters. Food was there, right? No, no. But the moment we understand that technical progress serves—not need, which is always finite, determined, natural, determined within determined, there's 'terminated' in it.
37:59 We need to play the philosopher a little bit today, really think through the words, not speak in their place but let them speak, listen to them. Determined, defined. I told you, every time I've seen a lion, in my African life, it was snoozing. And yes, it's quickly summed up—once it's eaten and once it's reproduced the species with the female, that's it, but it sleeps. Already we sleep a third of our lives, according to calculations, that's a lot. Sleeping for more than 30 years is quite something.
38:30 But lions sleep three times more. Just watch your cats at home, they spend their time snoozing. Besides, what's mine doing? She's sleeping. There you go. So what am I reminding you of? That if technology serves not need, which is finite, which is terminated, but serves an infinitude that will never be entirely satisfied—and all the better—which is proper to man, not because man has a voracity, right, that brings chaos into being, into the universe, no, but because, as we've just seen thanks to Pascal, he always needs to be di-, di-, diverted, take a detour, curve away; he is diverted from the very short and prosaic path that would have been that of need.
39:29 And don't say, but that's for the rich—how is that for the rich? Even the poorest person tries to do a bit better on feast days, and I'd even say especially the poor—it's in the poorest countries that I've been best received, best welcomed, with the most generous hospitality. So, this is crucial—the passage where Pascal almost justifies distraction by saying that those who play the philosopher about it, saying it's vain, that it's ridiculous for man to chase after phantoms—well, they're not phantoms, because it's always something gained.
40:01 The time that was gained by not being in despair, and there's no longer any need to be in despair. If I have music worth listening to, a film worth watching, a landscape worth crossing or staying in—I mention this because vacations are approaching, well-deserved after all. I'm not even talking about our relation to the other, which is even more important, right, relationships with loved ones, with family, with children, with the beloved person—all of this, thankfully, are forms of distraction in the Pascalian sense, that is, they keep us from thinking about the one who is in prison, and that's why Pascal says: hence it is that prison is such a horrible torment, deprived of all distraction.
40:52 There would therefore be—this is what I'd like to head toward this evening—a way out toward a non-guilty distraction, let us decree, provided it is accompanied by social justice. What is atrocious about misery is that it is not shared, on the other hand. You hear enough talk about the 1% who run the planet, and who are preparing the greatest socio-economic catastrophe in the history of capitalism.
41:28 I believe we're now at more than 7 million unemployed in France, it's moving fast, since the last time we talked about it. In the United States, they're at 30 million. So we'll probably be at more than 10 million by the fall. Well, depending on whether I reflect on Pascal's text or on the notion of distraction or happiness with 5 young children screaming in one room or at best two rooms, while others have acres of woods, forest, and ponds within their own walls—it's not quite the same thing.
42:14 You see that Rousseau is unavoidable in some sense. He doesn't say property is theft. That's not Rousseau, that's Proudhon. It would be too much for someone who has produced billions in surplus value at the factory, on the assembly line, in the workshop, or as a farm laborer—it would be too much for that person to be considered a thief the day they buy their first TV, or even their first car. By what right?
42:44 On the other hand, Rousseau says in Émile: 'Rich or poor, powerful or weak, every idle citizen is a rogue.' Someone who cannot justify what they have through the production of value. Someone who parasitizes society without giving anything in exchange—and here we find the great Clouscardian divide. There are two social classes in society, and there are 36,000. But there are two.
43:14 36,000 when you refine things a little between financial bourgeoisie, mercantile bourgeoisie, industrial bourgeoisie. But there are two fundamental ones. The class of those who consume more than they produce, and the class of those who produce more than they consume. There you go. So, I'll stop soon, but let me read you a few texts now with less commentary, because I think I've clarified them a bit in advance, I hope.
Reading of Hölderlin: man dwells in huts 43:46 I'm going to read you a fragment of Hölderlin that would have seemed rather mysterious to you if we hadn't said all this, but which is so beautiful I can't resist. That's not the only reason I'm reading it to you. I can't resist the pleasure of reading it to you. Very short, I reassure you. You, noble beast, roams freely, no doubt, but man dwells in huts. You see, that's where repression begins. But man dwells in huts and wraps himself in the garment of his shame.
44:21 Man—it's not from outside that he's forced; it's he himself who wraps himself in the garment of his shame, for he is more intimate, more attentive too, and preserves the spirit like the priestess, the celestial flame. I go back a bit—for he is more intimate, man. Intimate is said in German as 'in,' the 'in' of interior, like the 'in' of 'intime' in French. So it should really be said: for he is more inward.
44:52 For he is more intimate, more attentive too, and preserves the spirit. So you see, he doesn't give free rein to self-knowledge, he preserves the spirit. Look at the comparison—like the priestess. The vestals, you know, in Rome, the vestals, were those young girls who were supposed to be virgins, and their main task was above all never to let the fire go out, the sacred fire. The flame.
45:25 And that he preserves the spirit, man does—so his own knowledge, he husbands it, like the priestess the celestial flame. That is his understanding. That is proper to man. An ant has no need to repress a death it never thinks about. So that is his understanding. And that is why—look at the extraordinary reversal—and that is why freedom is given to him, and the highest power to fail as to succeed, to accomplish as to bungle, and the highest power to fail as to accomplish—what?
46:03 To him, the one like unto God, the most perilous of goods, speech, is given to man. This will be the last part of my talk this evening. This problem that I always come back to: that philosophy does not express itself like fully formalized languages, like so-called formal logic, and like—with much more respect—mathematics, like all perfectly formalized languages. It does not express itself through algorithms, in an unequivocal way.
46:36 It expresses itself in a between-two. It's what makes us say—sorry to keep using the same example, but it's so everyone understands, even about something so important—the sun rises, the day breaks; it's an image, it's a metaphor, it's poetry. I'm not really—we are not in mathematics, in philosophy, and yet we try to arrive at truth. Beyond error and lying, to arrive at a truth using a language that, at the outset, wasn't made for that, because human language at the start—I'll never say it enough—was made to signal game to the rest of the band, right, in prehistory, to seduce, to condemn, to absolve, to beg, to lie, to pronounce a judgment, to acquit, but certainly not to know.
47:29 A word to the cognitive sciences. So I'll repeat this text now and move on. You, noble beast, but man dwells in huts and wraps himself in the garment of his shame, for he is more intimate, more attentive too, and preserves the spirit like the priestess, the celestial flame. That is his understanding. And that is why freedom belongs to him. Now I'll stop. Freedom belongs to him.
47:59 That's why it's a causal relation. Because if I repress, it's because I saw the truth. I said it quickly last time, this time I insist. If I repress something somewhere, it's because it doesn't suit me. It's because I see that it doesn't suit me. There's a fraction of a second. Go measure that with a clock. Where the truth appears before I push it into the darkness of what he calls here the hut, isn't that right? The garment of his shame. So, and that's why freedom is given to him, and the highest power, the possibility, of failing as of accomplishing, to him, the one like God.
48:41 Here again, I'll stop. I couldn't stop the first time because this sentence is so magnificent I didn't want to interrupt it. To him, the one like God — that doesn't mean man is God. But God created man in his image, the Scripture wisely says. An image, an image of my beloved, is not my beloved. When I'm in the trench and I look at what's left to me, a little photo covered in mud of my beloved, it's still not as if she were beside me. The image of God is not God. When we say God created man in his image, it's to show the abyss that separates man from God.
49:16 Isn't that so? And that's why freedom is given to him and the higher power to fail as to accomplish, to him, the one like God, the most perilous of goods. He is given the most perilous of goods, speech given to man. I'm going to finish the text, which has a bit less to do with lying, but which is magnificent. It would be a shame to cut it short. "So that, creating, destroying, perishing and returning to the eternally living, to the mistress and mother, so that he may bear witness to what he is, having inherited, learned from her, what is most divine in her, the love that sustains everything."
Hegel, Philosophy of Spirit of 1805: the night of the world 49:56 There, I wanted to read that text. And still on the subject of lying, a text again from Hegel's youth, taken from... I've often been asked, because it's my fault. Maybe I don't specify enough. When I speak of the first philosophy of spirit, there are two of them. There's one from 1803-1804.
50:26 All that belongs to Hegel's youth. The works of youth are all those that precede the Phenomenology at Jena, which is in 1807. Usually, regarding the tool of reason, of money, I cite the last time the one from 1803-1804. Here, I'm citing to you the Philosophy of Spirit of 1805. These are works in which the system begins to take shape, a definitive system. He speaks of consciousness when it is at the embryonic stage, at the primitive stage, let's say, which is not yet reason, intelligence, science, far from it, but which only has images, which doesn't yet have words, but which has memory.
51:05 This image belongs to spirit. Spirit is in possession of it. Spirit is its master. I don't want to stop, without stopping, when it's a bit complicated and not related to what I want to show. The image is preserved, memory, in the treasury — it's underlined — of spirit, in the night of spirit. And yes, memory, dream, imagination, all that is not the light of day. It's the kingdom of night. It's inside that one sees representations. It's not present.
51:36 It's not lit by the light of Apollo like the Greek world. That is to say, it doesn't have the image exposed as an object before representation, and there's this passage to which I draw your attention. Man is this night. He doesn't say there is night in him. Man is this night. That is, one must pass through this night which is proper to man. This nothingness, possibility of negating, must be taken as a present participle, not only as a noun.
52:06 Nothingness, like being and nothingness, but as the act of negating. Isn't that right? Man is this night. This empty nothingness that contains everything in the simplicity of this night. A wealth of representation, of infinitely multiple images, none of which precisely comes to mind, or which are not present as such. It's night. I should have asked you to count how many times the word night appears in this excerpt. It's night, the interior of nature that exists here, pure self — it's underlined — in the phantasmagoric representations, when one is inside oneself, in the image — phantasma means image in the plural.
52:47 In phantasmagoric representation, it's night all around. Here suddenly a bloody head arises. What a strange text! There, another white silhouette, and they disappear likewise. I told you we'd find red and white again. I'm not doing it on purpose. Don't think I just picked the example of Perceval, the blood stains in the snow, Nerval with the red and white on the tunics of the young men in his dream. There's an infinity of illustrations.
53:17 There is indeed a polarity between the immaculate sign of Mallarmé and Stérile, and Nerval where there are the two colors I quoted you last time. "Beneath the pallor of Abel, alas, blood-stained, I sometimes bear of Cain the implacable redness." So I repeat this incredible passage. It's night, the interior of nature that exists here in man. Pure self in the phantasmagoric representations. It's night all around. Here suddenly a bloody head arises.
53:48 There, another white silhouette, and they disappear likewise. And then there's this sentence: it is this night that one discovers when one looks a man in the eyes. I'll open a parenthesis now. Kipling's Jungle Book — the English know animals well, as you know, especially when they've been to the colonies. He spent the whole first part of his life in India, didn't he, Kipling. Remember, if you will, The Jungle Book, Bagheera and Baloo look away from Mowgli when Mowgli looks them in the eyes.
54:22 He says, "Don't look at me like that, little man." The animal has no desire at all to be in contact with human anxiety. Isn't that right? So, it is this night that one discovers when one looks a man in the eyes. One plunges one's gaze into a night that becomes terrifying. The word is underlined. It is the night of the world that advances here to meet each one. That is what one must, without any guilt, distract oneself from.
54:54 The whole history of the progress of civilization. I insist. I repeat, our era is against man but it's also against progress. As it happens. It goes together, as it were. And also against the universal, as you know. Remember that counter-revolutionary who starved the poor peasants who were on his lands. In atrocious conditions that Marx speaks of in Capital. I'm thinking of Burke, aren't I?
55:24 champion of the English counter-revolutionaries practically at the time of the Revolution, and who said, yes, in my life, I've met Hungarians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Italians, but I've never met men. The universal. Whereas what exists, in other words, they don't want to share with these people. They don't want to share this distress that is in the eyes of every human being when they don't have, precisely, the means. There, I insist. There, I claim it, when I say the means. You know that now they say it's not just a matter of means in the hospital.
55:55 You need professional conscientiousness. Yes, yes. Every time, they say the means. Means are good enough for the needy, that. No. That's the whole difference, between the terrifying and collective happiness. It is this night that one discovers when one looks a man in the eyes. One plunges one's gaze into a night that becomes terrifying. It is the night of the world that advances here to meet each one. I reassure you, this is a primitive stage of consciousness. Afterward, it will progress. It will discover art, science, and so on.
56:29 and the organization of the city. I think we've stirred up a fairly dense body of material, so it might be time to hand the floor over to the audience, in case the audience has questions to ask. So, sorry again for this second interruption.
Audience question: the earthly paradise and the expulsion from it 57:04 It seems there are two questions that came in. So, the first one asks me to develop what the passage of the earthly paradise, or rather the stay there and the departure from it, means in relation to our discussion on origins, since I alluded to the Old Testament, to Genesis, to Abel and Cain. Listen, again, for texts so important and so overloaded with symbolism for so long, as you can imagine, without any value judgment, neither good nor bad, less than ever, we must engage in the dubious cooking of interpretation, yours, mine, someone else's, etc.
57:55 I'll spare you mine. I'm asking you to pay attention to what's said in the text. So, what is said? Bring it to everyone's attention, to all those who have read the text. For that, you have to look carefully at what is said before original sin, before the act of biting the apple, and after. Before, Adam and Eve are naked. So that already answers Leslie's question, I think. They are naked, which is a clear allusion to the animal stage.
58:29 That means we're not yet in anthropology, in the earthly paradise. That was perhaps the best there was, that's paradise. But still, I mean, there's not the infinite anxiety that characterizes man. Once again, it's nakedness. What shows this in the text is that once they've bitten the apple, God calls Adam in the garden. Adam hears the voice of the Eternal calling him. And Adam answers him, "I'm hiding because I don't want you to see me all naked."
59:06 And there, the Eternal says, "But then, you have tasted the tree of knowledge, because if you know you're naked and you're ashamed of it, it's because you've tasted the tree of knowledge." That's where the trouble begins, of course, for Adam and Eve, who will soon be driven out. And in the curse pronounced by God that follows — again, I'm not interpreting anything, I'm just restoring words that almost everyone knows but that I recall — to the woman and to the man.
59:36 To the woman: you will give birth in pain. Which shows what good observers they were — it's a people of herders who wrote the Bible. It's a people of shepherds, of sheep, of ovines, of caprines, where the great event is the birth of the young. The great event, especially when it's big livestock, when it's the cow or the dromedary, don't even mention it. Birth is complicated. You know that in France, even now, there are farmers who go get their neighbors and their solidarity when a cow is about to calve, as they say, to give birth to a calf.
1:00:13 It's something unforgettable when you witness it. So, you will give birth in pain. It's not over for the woman. Since you succumbed to the serpent, he will remain your enemy, you will crush him with your heel and he will bite your heel. There's always a terror of snakes among women, not only among women, but especially — she used to faint whenever someone brought her a snake, my brother and I.
1:00:44 We were in Africa, we'd find snakes in the newspaper, I'd bring them to her. And so, he will bite your heel, and Adam, you will earn your bread by the sweat of your brow. The birth of labor. The birth of that praxis I was speaking about a moment ago, which is why Leslie's question is very rich, about the earthly paradise and its opposite, the world in which we live. This praxis which is in the service of an infinity, of an infinite desire.
1:01:21 If I made you eat your favorite dish every day, the one you'd give anything to taste, you'd be sick of it after a few days, if it kept repeating, or a few weeks, depending on how quickly you get bored. So, think a little about those who, out of necessity, eat more or less the same thing every day, and it's not their favorite dish. By the way, I come back here to the importance of social justice in this whole apparently metaphysical and moral problem we're discussing, about lying and fault.
1:01:54 Let's go back to the original fault. On the other hand, it is indeed said that one can no longer return to the earthly paradise. It's said in a figurative form: there's the angel with the flaming sword who guards the entrance to the garden of Eden and forbids anyone from turning back. In other words, Nerval is right to say that ignorance cannot be learned. I can't now act as if I were an animal.
1:02:28 It's in relation to God, and far too much for the animal. That's why it flees our gaze. There, very good question. I also have Ile Bastia here, whom I greet. I'm very glad she's present, and she's an excellent writer. I say this in passing. She writes very well. I believe Philippe gave her the references for Hegel's text from which I read an excerpt on the night of the world advancing to meet each one.
1:03:04 It's taken from the Philosophy of Spirit published in the Epiméthée collection, isn't it? And at the Presses Universitaires de France, at PUF. And it is indeed the Philosophy of Spirit of 1805, to be precise. There. It's on the very, very first page. On the very first page. If there are no other questions, I thank you, and above all I ask you to please excuse the few glitches we ran into, which are quite independent.
1:03:43 This time, I believe it's not our fault at all. And I thank you for your presence, and I say to you, following this thrilling series, on the strange logics of the subject. There we are. Thank you for your presence. Thank you.
